Not all our memories are pleasant; some are very painful. We relive them well into old age, like faded photographs of emotions tumbling inside our minds.
Long, long ago, I was 2 or 3, just that age when days last forever and images burn themselves into our aching toddler minds. My mom had taken us to a covered swimming pool for my older sister’s swimming lessons. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one, it was one of those inflatable buildings kept up by a large noisy fan. The smell of chlorine assaulted my nasals senses and the strange ethereal lighting as the sun tried to pierce the vinyl ceiling made it seem like some kind of dream.
There was little room around the edge of the pool. Numerous chairs with middle-aged gaggling women surrounded the pool on all sides, with barely inches between them and the coping. I was there with a friend too, and it seemed almost destiny we should both spot the little toy on the cement decking at the same time. It was a tiny red rubber fire engine with speckles of silver paint. We both scrambled for it, but he got to it first. So I chased him. Chased him through that narrow gap between women’s legs and deep pool water. And as though on purpose to punish me for running near a pool, one lady stuck her leg out just as I reached her (I’ll never know if it was on purpose). Into the water I went, head first, tumbling wildly around and around, breathing in chlorinated water and slowly losing consciousness.
Not one single woman lifted a hand to help me. And they were only inches away. I was drowning. But a man clear on the other side of the pool dove in and saved me. And I owe the last 45 years of my life to that unknown caring person.
I do apologize if I seem so adamant about my feelings, but I just can’t be one of those women watching someone or something drown. I’ve got to do something. And so I hope you will forgive me if I say that I feel BSG is drowning and I can’t help but raise the cry for help. Yes, it may survive as something else, but the essence of what it is will not. You cannot fool a parent with a child which shares the name but not the spirit. And we are all parents of a fashion, aching to see our infant show grow to become the wonder we know it could be. If only December would yield /our/ child, the one we have loved so deeply and so long.
I am running around a pool again, chasing a fantasy continuation someone else has made off with. And if I fall, a part of the childhood in me drowns once again. It’s not drowning after all that still scares me; it’s wondering how all those people can watch a child drown and not do something.
Affectionately and respectfully,
Muffit
Drowning and BSG
